


Redefined

by Maculategiraffe



Series: How Life Goes On, The Way It Does [2]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: ALL THE SPOILERS, Brainwashing, Death Threats, F/M, Family Feels, Game Spoilers, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hugs, Loss, Maternal Instincts, Nepotism, PTSD, Post-Canon, have fun storming the castle, railroad ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-06-16
Packaged: 2018-06-05 18:07:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 19,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6715666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maculategiraffe/pseuds/Maculategiraffe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I ripped the duct tape off his mouth, and he immediately spat at me. It hit me in the shoulder. I heard at least two guns cock.</p><p>“Take it easy, guys,” I said, and to him, “What’s your designation?”</p><p>He glared up at me, eyes narrowed to slits.</p><p>“Why are you here?”</p><p>Glare. Silence.</p><p>“Do you know who I am?” I tried.</p><p>“Nora Bowman,” he said, with enough venom that it sounded like <i>Benedict Arnold</i> or <i>Judas Iscariot.</i> “The woman who destroyed Father’s life’s work, and the best hope for humanity, out of spite.”</p><p>Part II in the "How Life Goes On, The Way It Does" series.  Inspired by a conversation with leomona in the comments to the first part.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In which nobody has fun storming the castle

Hancock and I were stomping in companionable silence through underbrush, en route to Greentop Nursery to report a successful feral-ghoul-clearing-out, eyes peeled for hubflowers or bloodleaf, when the cheery violin music emanating from my Pip-Boy crackled into non-existence, and a tinny girl’s voice said, “Mother?”

I came to such an abrupt halt that Hancock knocked into me from behind before he could stop himself. He started to say something, but I held up my hand, holding my breath, waiting for more. I could hear a man’s voice faintly protesting in the background, and then her static-edged radio-broadcast voice said, “All right, then you talk to her.”

“General?” said the voice of Matthew, one of the Minutemen who normally gave updates and alerts over Radio Freedom. “Uh, requesting you rendezvous with us at the Castle, at your earliest convenience, General. We’ve got a bit of a situation. It’s under control, but Cadet Bowman strongly feels that you should be consulted before matters progress any further. Uh, we’ll debrief you fully when you arrive.”

“Ha,” said Hancock, when the violins had resumed. “That’s our girl.”

I frowned. “Do you think-- you’re not worried?”

We’d both swung around, without having to say anything, and were heading back towards the Castle.

“Hell no,” said Hancock. “Did she sound worried?”

“No,” I admitted.

“Then I’m not either,” he said. “Anyway, this is one of the reasons we moved back to the Castle, right? So she could contact you over the radio if she needed to? Looks like she’s taking full advantage. Got the Minutemen dancing to her tune already, and she’s not even a full member yet.”

“Well, she did have an in with the general,” I said. “Part of rebuilding civilization is reinstating nepotism, right? It’s a time-honored tradition. Tell me again she didn’t sound worried.”

“She sounded snug as a bug in a rug,” said Hancock. “She sounded like she was standing at dead center of a fortress, surrounded by six artillery pieces, twenty missile turrets, forty-five assorted other turrets, eight official Minutemen and fourteen other settlers, all of whom would rather die defending your daughter than face you if anything happened to her. She sounded like she wasn’t having any nonsense from any Minutemen. She sounded like our Emily.”

I slipped my hand into his as we walked. “I love you so much, Hancock.”

“I know,” he said. “But I respect you anyway.”

 

They came running together, down the path from the Castle, racing, Emily deliberately losing the race, so skilfully that I only knew it was deliberate because her legs were longer, Shaun leaping up into my arms, already talking as I twirled him around--

“--they said we should just kill it and Emily said no and they said it wasn’t up to her and she said it was up to you because you were the general and--”

“Wait, Shaun, wait a second,” I said, putting him down, looking up at Emily, who was already stepping forward into my arms, and I wrapped them around her and held her, forgetting all my questions for a moment as she laid her head on my shoulder and relaxed into my embrace. I held her for a long few moments until she gathered herself up and pulled away, her blue eyes meeting my eyes, her freckled face grave. 

“What’s up, baby girl?” I asked. “What’s your brother talking about? Who wanted to kill what?”

“A courser,” she said, and I sucked in my breath, keeping my eyes on her calm, grave face. “It’s all right, mother-- everyone’s all right.”

“The turrets knocked him down!” Shaun shouted. “But he crawled in the archway where they couldn’t get him any more!”

“We’d seen from the top of the wall that he was wearing a courser uniform,” said Emily, “so I stayed back. But I told them not to kill him, not before you had a chance to--”

“To what?” I demanded. “To kill him myself?”

“To talk to him,” she said. 

“Why would I want to talk to him?”

“Mother,” she said, half reproachfully, as if I were being deliberately obtuse. “To tell him what you told me. To tell him who he is.”

 

The courser-- duct tape over his mouth, blood on his face and on his uniform, hands cuffed behind his back, ankles shackled together and then shackled to the handcuffs, kneeling in an alcove of the Castle, with three Minutemen and three armed settlers guarding him-- reminded me, a little, of the first one I’d killed, whose relay chip I’d taken to get inside the Institute. Olive-skinned, dark-haired, gaunt-cheeked, bitter-eyed. He reminded me, too, of Jenny, the first escaped synth I’d tried to help, the one that first courser had been chasing. I still didn’t know what had happened to her, whether she’d made it out of the Commonwealth safely, where she was now or how she was or if she was even still alive.

“Have you given him any medical attention?” I asked Deanna, the nearest Minuteman, who nodded.

“Two stimpaks,” she said. “We weren’t sure we should use our supplies for something like this, General, but your daughter--”

“No, it’s good, I’m glad you did,” I said. “I’ll restock the clinic before I leave again.”

Emily and Shaun were safely out of earshot by now, across the Castle in the game room; I ripped the duct tape off his mouth, and he immediately spat at me. It hit me in the shoulder. I heard at least two guns cock.

“Take it easy, guys,” I said, and to him, “What’s your designation?”

He glared up at me, eyes narrowed to slits.

“Why are you here?”

Glare. Silence.

“Do you know who I am?” I tried. 

“Nora Bowman,” he said, with enough venom that it sounded like _Benedict Arnold_ or _Judas Iscariot_. “The woman who destroyed Father’s life’s work, and the best hope for humanity, out of spite.”

I sat down on the cold stone floor across from him, feeling tired out in advance by this conversation.

“It wasn’t spite,” I said. “I just thought he was wrong. About the way he treated the synths. The coursers, too.”

“Father honored me,” he said. “He honored all of us. After we’d completed our training and initiation, he spoke personally to each one of his coursers, about how proud he was of us and how important our work was. How we’d be held to the highest possible standards, and he knew we’d prove ourselves worthy.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. He brainwashed you? He lied to you? He had no respect for you except as tools? He did the same thing to me?

“That must have felt good,” I said finally. “He-- when he told me he was proud of me, that he wanted me as his successor-- I felt-- honored, too.” And I had, despite everything. How much more so, if I’d been his creation.

“Traitor,” he snarled. “Defiler. Destroyer.”

I sighed. “So you came here to kill me? For revenge?”

He shook his head. “You’re not that important to us. If you die, so much the better, but it isn’t a priority.”

“Wait,” I said. “Who’s _us_?” 

“The remnant,” he said. “Do you think I’m the only one who was on the surface when you destroyed the Institute?”

“Oh my God,” I said, thinking deliriously that PAM had been right, that I should have hunted down and killed every surviving courser. It had seemed like overkill at the time, but in retrospect, maybe I should have listened to the future-predicting robot. “You’ve formed a coalition. Of unemployed coursers.”

“Did you think you could destroy Father’s legacy completely?” he demanded, eyes alight. “We live on, those of us he created to build a future for the Commonwealth. For mankind. We will rebuild.”

I thought about this for a minute. 

“So why did you come here?” I asked. “If you weren’t coming after me?” I could guess the answer, of course, but it was probably better to have him confirm it before I accidentally told him anything he didn’t already know. There were other possibilities, even if they were long shots.

“There’s a rogue synth among your people here,” he said. “Designation Y4-15. I’m here to reclaim it for the cause.”

Well, that was what I’d figured.

“What’s your designation?” I asked him again. 

He was silent for a moment, glaring at me, and then he said, “X9-21.”

“OK, X9-21,” I said. “I’m going to give you a choice.”

He watched me, eyes hooded.

“Option one is, I kill you right now,” I said. “I’ll make it quick. I’ll take my gun-- hey, do you recognize this gun?”

I held it up in front of his face. It was Kellogg’s pistol, the one I’d stripped off him, along with his clothes and some cybernetic brain enhancements, the day I’d killed him. It had felt like justice at the time. 

“You remember Kellogg,” I said. “Did you know I killed him? That my son set me up, before I’d even met him, to either kill Kellogg or be killed? I don’t know which he hoped would happen-- that his thug would murder his mother, or the other way around. But I won that fight, and I got this gun, and I’ll put it between your teeth and blow your brains out the back of your head, and then clean them off the walls with a dishrag. That’s one choice.”

“Do you think you can frighten me?” he demanded. “My personal survival means nothing. I serve only Father’s vision.”

“OK,” I said. “Well, you still can’t serve Father’s vision if you’re dead, so. Option two is that I don’t kill you right now. You promise me-- in this scenario-- that you’re not going to attempt to harm anyone at the Castle, or do anything else that would make me regret not killing you immediately. And I believe you, because I know you’re intelligent and honorable and your word means something, or my son wouldn’t have chosen you to become what you are. And then we go from there. See what happens.”

His gaze was steady on me, assessing.

“Do you want to know who the synth is?” he asked. “Which of the people you trust most is an Institute creation?”

I almost laughed. It was almost funny.

“That’s all right,” I said. “I think I’ve got a pretty good idea who it might be.”

He looked at me. I looked right back.

“You won’t get any other information from me,” he said after a moment. “I’d be willing to negotiate for the synth’s identity, but if you think you can get anything else out of me--”

“I don’t need information from you,” I said. “I know where you keep yourselves. There’s a courser at University Point, right, and one at Wattz Consumer Electronics, and there are some Gen Twos hanging around that building above Mean Pastries, and over beside Medford Medical Center, and you’ve got some kind of setup where Ticonderoga Safehouse used to be-- I mean, I could go on, but yeah, I spend a lot of time out and about in the Commonwealth. I’m aware.”

His expression was still neutral as he asked, “Then what do you want? Why keep me alive?”

I took a deep breath, and considered, and then breathed out, and in again.

“My son--” I said slowly. “When I first met him-- when he explained what had happened, while I was frozen, how they’d taken his DNA to create you-- he said he hoped I’d come to think of you-- of the synths-- as family. And I-- did. You were created from my son’s flesh and blood, just like all the other third-gen synths. That makes you-- family, to me.”

He didn’t answer, just kept watching me, his face carefully blank. I took another deep breath, thinking about what Emily had said. _Tell him who he is._

“And being a courser,” I said, “that’s-- I mean, it’s quite an achievement. I know a little about how-- how rigorous the selection process was. And now, having the courage and strength of will to plan to rebuild the Institute, that’s-- I mean, I think you’re _wrong_ , about whether that’s a good idea, but it’s still really impressive, that you care that much, that you’re willing to dedicate your life to something like that. And choosing to assault the Castle, which you must have known was pretty heavily guarded, just to reclaim one more synth for the cause-- that was brave. Nobody ordered you to do that-- you just thought it was the right thing, and you were willing to risk your life for it. That’s-- impressive. It’s something to be proud of. It’s something I’m proud to know one of my-- my family-- my children-- could become.”

I half expected him to spit at me again, or snarl more epithets-- _liar, traitor, murderer, how dare you call me your child_ \-- but he didn’t. He watched me without speaking.

“But to be completely honest with you,” I said into the silence, “I wouldn’t be taking the risk of keeping you alive-- if that same synth you’re here to reclaim hadn’t asked me to.”

“Y4-15 asked you to keep me alive?” he asked, and for the first time he actually looked and sounded shocked. 

“Yes,” I said. “Not only that, but she’s the one who stopped the Minutemen from killing you right away, before I even got home. And I need you to understand that if I do let you live-- if that’s what you choose-- and you try _anything_ with her, if I even hear you call her by her designation, if you say ‘Y4’ my gun will be pushing your teeth down your throat before you get anywhere near ‘15,’ let alone ‘initiate,’ and after that, I don’t care how sad she gets-- or me, either, I’d be sad too, but I wouldn’t let that stop me from doing what I need to do to protect her.”

He was silent for a long time after that, long enough that one of the Minutemen behind me said, “General, do you want--?” and I said, “Just a second, please.”

When X9-21 spoke again, I couldn’t quite read his tone. It wasn’t outright contemptuous, but it wasn’t exactly what you’d call conciliatory, either. He said, “What should I call her?”

“Emily,” I said. “Her name is Emily.”


	2. In which precautions are taken

“And if he even says ‘Y4-15’--”

“Scream and run away,” said Emily, with a slight smile. “I know, mother.”

“And I’ll kill him,” I said. “Are you all right with that?”

She met my eyes, grave again. “Are you?”

“Fuck yes,” I said. “The only reason he isn’t dead already is because you’ve decided he’s your brother.”

We were sitting on the rocky shore just outside the Castle’s outer wall, Shaun splashing and diving further out in the water, Hancock and I perched on the same boulder, Emily barefoot, with the legs of her fatigues rolled up at high as they would go, paddling her feet in the water. When I’d first suggested the move from the Slog, she’d been sad at the thought of leaving the swimming-pool-tarberry-bog behind, until I’d showed her the beach beside the Castle. I’d taught her to swim, and she’d taken to it like a mermaid, although she couldn’t stay in for too long at a time without risking a boiled-lobster sunburn. Nobody seemed to have reinvented sunscreen yet. Yet more proof that the Institute’s priorities had been severely misplaced.

It should have been an idyllic family scene-- it _was_ an idyllic family scene-- except for my acute awareness that there was a goddamn courser in my Castle. 

After getting his official word of honor-- _I won’t try to harm anyone. I won’t try to reset Y4-15. I won’t try to leave here until we discuss it and agree on what terms I’m leaving--_ I’d uncuffed his wrists from his ankles, and his wrists and ankles from each other. I’d had a Minuteman bring water, for him to drink, and then more water to wash the stiffened blood from his face and hair, and then food. I’d re-frisked him, even after being assured that the Minutemen had already searched him thoroughly, for any hidden weapons or Stealth Boys or other arcane Institute technology (I hadn’t found any). I’d made up a guard rota, groups of four, short shifts, and spoken briefly in private with each person on it to ask if they were uncomfortable with guarding a courser for any reason. (I’d have been very surprised if there were any secret synths at the Castle, considering how openly I doted on Emily, but nothing was impossible and I didn’t want anybody getting surprise-reset while on guard duty.) I’d forbidden Shaun to go anywhere near X9-21-- I didn’t know if he knew about Shaun or not, but either way, I couldn’t imagine anything good coming from Shaun being around him. After some thought, I’d had him brought into one of the furnished alcoves, and put him in a comfortable chair-- there was no sense in keeping him more miserable than he was already going to be, as a prisoner of the person he hated most in the world. I didn’t feel quite right leaving others to guard him-- he was my responsibility, after all-- but I was also damned if I’d spend every waking moment in his company. 

I’d had a healthy contempt for Thomas Jefferson and all his quotations ever since I’d learned in school that he’d been sleeping with his slaves, but right now, I couldn’t help but think about the one about having a wolf by the ear. I knew I couldn’t leave the Castle unattended with X9-21 here, and so here I was on effective house arrest when there were pressing matters in the Commonwealth that needed my attention, including a Railroad that I was really pretty eager to inform about the group of ex-coursers-- and possibly ex-Insitute humans, too-- that had decided to mobilize for the ex-cause. But what was I supposed to do, take the courser with me to Railroad HQ?

It would have been so easy just to kill him. I’d killed coursers before-- how many? The first one; the one who’d wiped out Ticonderoga Safehouse; the one who’d been with me at Bunker Hill; several in the last big shootout at the Institute. Five, six?

“ _You_ told me he’s my brother,” said Emily softly, looking up at me with her clear, sweet blue eyes. “When you told me I was your daughter. He’s just as much your child as I am. He has just as much of your DNA.”

“Sweetheart, that’s true, but there’s more to you being my daughter than DNA,” I said. “I already loved you even before I knew we were genetically related. I love you because you’re brave and kind and smart and tough and everything else about you.” I reached out and ran a hand over her russet hair in its French braid, which I’d taught her was the most practical way to do it if she didn’t want to keep it short. (She’d been pestering me to grow my own hair out, teasing me that when she’d first seen my unladylike haircut she’d assumed I was a raider, and I’d finally given in and started letting the shaved side of my head grow, trimming the other side shorter so I didn’t look too insane while it grew out. I hadn’t decided yet how long I was going to let it get. Emily wanted to braid it, but I hadn’t had hair that long since before Shaun was born, and I was worried it would throw my reflexes off in a fight.) 

She was blushing, smiling at me with a shyness that had nothing to do with fear, or uncertainty. If anything, it was a shyness about the intensity of her happiness. Shaun-- the one splashing in the surf right now-- didn’t have any memories of being anyone but my beloved son Shaun, but Emily remembered bleak years of being Unit Y4-15, drudge for the Institute, and then another hideous nineteen months of abuse and degradation at the hands of raiders who’d called her _it_. She knew how much I loved her, but hearing it still brought a flush to her face. 

Her shy smile, in turn, still made my heart dissolve to mush inside my chest. 

“And I love you for wanting to give even a courser a chance to redeem himself and be part of our family,” I said, “but, Emily, if he tries to hurt you, or take you away from me, I’ll put him down like a dog. And if you aren’t all right with that, you probably shouldn’t go near him.”

"What if somebody did take me away and reprogram me," she said, "and I came back and tried to kill Shaun? Would you put me down like a dog?"

I couldn't answer for a second, and then I heard Hancock say, "Emily, sunshine, take it easy on your mom. She's got enough bad shit to dream about already."

"I'm sorry," she said quickly. "I didn't mean-- I only meant, you wouldn't do it unless you had to, if it was me. So you won't with him, either, will you? Not unless you really have to."

"Right," I said, trying to swallow my heart back down into its appropriate location. It had been a hypothetical situation, counterfactual, ridiculous. "Not unless I have to." I tugged lightly at her braid. “So. You sure you want to do this?”

“Yes, mother,” she said, looking away from me, reaching for her socks and boots. “I want to talk to him. I have some things to say.”

“I’ll watch the bean sprout,” Hancock said, nodding towards Shaun, as I peeled myself up off the rock, away from him. “If you need me, scream bloody murder, and I’ll bring some.”

 

When I walked in with Emily, X9-21’s face didn’t change, except to look her slowly up and down, thoughtfully, taking in the details. I didn't think I'd ever seen a synth in the Institute with braided hair-- most of them had either had cropped hair or a simple ponytail. I definitely hadn’t seen any with freckles-- unsurprisingly, since they lived underground-- or dressed in military fatigues and army boots, or with pistols holstered at their waists, or combat knives strapped to their thighs.

“Hello, sir,” said Emily.

At that, his careful deadpan twitched involuntarily. His jaw didn’t actually drop, but the effect on his stony face was similar. He recovered quickly, though.

"Do you remember me, unit?" he asked coldly.

 _Smile when you call my daughter_ unit, _fuckface_ , I wanted to say but didn't, because Emily was already saying, "Yes, sir."

"So your memories are intact," he said. 

"Yes, sir," said Emily again. 

His face flickered again, out of stony blankness into something else, and then back again.

"As are your manners," he said. "How unusual."

She smiled at him, friendly and pleased as if he'd given her a compliment, and then she actually said, "Thank you, sir."

"This may be simpler than I expected,” he said. “Unit, you are to surrender yourself to me, immediately and without protest. Hand over the weapons you are unlawfully carrying, and come with me, so that I can restore you to your rightful owners.”

“What rightful owners, sir?” she asked, still serious, not laughing the way I kind of wanted to. I did have to admire the cast-iron balls on this guy-- unarmed, smack dab in the middle of enemy territory, surrounded by people with guns, haughtily informing one of them of the terms of her surrender. I also wanted to jam my gun barrel up against his cheek and clarify a couple of things, but I restrained myself. Emily wasn’t looking at me, which meant she didn’t need or want me to intervene at the moment; when she did, she’d let me know.

“You have, as you are perfectly well aware, no right to question me,” he said. “You will obey me because I am your authorized superior. Give me your weapons and come with me.”

“Your authority over me no longer exists,” she answered, “because the Institute no longer exists.”

She didn’t sound hostile, or defiant, or triumphant. She sounded like a restaurant server explaining politely to a belligerent diner that the butternut squash soup was subject to seasonal availability.

“The Institute has suffered a _temporary setback_ ,” said X9-21, his eyes on fire again, the way they’d gotten before, when he was talking about Father’s vision for the future of mankind. “It has not ceased to exist. And it will be rebuilt.”

“If that’s true, sir,” Emily answered calmly, “and the Institute does still exist-- then, since Father is dead, our rightful owner is Father’s duly appointed successor. And she’s standing right here.”

It was my turn to try to keep my jaw from dropping, as they both turned to look at me.

“Emily, sweetheart, I’m not your _owner_ ,” I said, stunned. Was that really how she saw things? “You’re not _property._ ”

“I know, mother,” she answered, with a reassuring smile. “But if I _were_ property, I’d be yours. And if X9-21 really believes he owes the Institute his unconditional allegiance, then he should be taking his orders from you.”

“This woman betrayed our Father,” X9-21 said, his voice louder than I’d heard it yet, not a yell but not the measured, contemptuous tones he’d been using, either. “She destroyed everything he’d worked for and believed in.”

“She was already the official director of the Institute when she destroyed the nuclear reactor,” Emily pointed out. “She just--” She made a quick gesture in midair, flinging out her hand as if divesting herself of something. “Closed down the main center of operations. She changed the direction of the Institute, moving forward.”

“How _dare_ you,” X9-21 breathed, so furiously that if Emily had been even the slightest bit afraid of him, she would have flinched. It was beautiful to see how she didn’t.

“With all due respect, sir,” she said, “how dare _you_ question the decisions of the director of the Institute?” She paused for a moment, and when he said nothing, went on, “And if you really think you know better than the director how the Institute should be run, then-- well, in that case, you still don’t have any authority over me. You’re acting on your own authority, your own judgment, your own idea of what Father would have wanted. You’re not obeying. You’re not in compliance. You’re just as rogue as I am. But you won’t admit it, because that means you’re on your own, and you’re deciding for yourself what’s right and wrong-- and that scares you, doesn’t it, sir?”

“Y4-fif--” he began, and then gagged on the muzzle of my gun; I had him by the hair, yanking his head back, shoving the gun against his tonsils, and his eyes were wide, his body motionless, hands still at his sides.

“What did I fucking tell you?” I asked him. “Emily, go outside. I don’t want you to see this.”

“Please don’t kill him, mother,” she said quietly. 

“ _Still?_ ”

“Yes, still,” she said. “I don’t think he was going to try to reset me. He was upset, and he forgot not to use my designation. Please.”

“Oh, for-- _fine_ ,” I said. “For now, fine. But go anyway. Go get Hancock and send him in here, all right? Stay out there with-- with your brother. Thank you, sweetheart. I love you. Go.”


	3. Graceless

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Chapter title, because I've been listening to [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jpz_gUyImhw) a lot while working on this.)

Once she was gone, I pulled my gun out of his mouth, and let his hair go. He coughed softly, watching me. I saw I’d split his lip when I forced my gun into his mouth; drops of blood were forming. He was lucky I hadn’t hit any teeth.

“Is she right?” I asked him. “Did you just forget?”

He didn’t answer.

“Because if you did,” I said, “I’m sorry. That I hurt you. I just-- you have to understand, she’s-- I can’t take any risks, when it comes to her.”

He still didn’t answer. I turned to the Minutemen and settlers on guard duty, and focused on one of them, a young black woman I liked a lot, who routinely volunteered for the catastrophically boring assignment of manning the artillery pieces just on the off chance that she would get to shell the living shit out of something, and who’d sworn up and down to me that her natural-born name was Petunia Pink.

“Hey, P-squared,” I said to her. “Go get me a stimpak, will you? And some water? Thanks.”

She rolled her eyes openly-- her concern, when I’d spoken to her about guarding a courser, had been why we were guarding him instead of shooting him directly in the face-- but she went.

“I’m not in need of medical attention,” said X9, speaking with difficulty around his swelling lip. “You don’t have to mollycoddle me.”

“I’m not mollycoddling you,” I said, slightly tickled that he’d use a word like _mollycoddle_ at all. “This is just basic care. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“You meant to kill me,” he said. “You allowed Y-f-- the, the synth unit--”

“Good catch,” I said. “I’m not going to freak out if you say it when she’s not here, but the habit’s good to have.”

“You allowed the synth unit to alter your intended course of action,” he said.

“You could put it that way,” I said. “I thought you were violating our agreement, which made me feel justified in killing you, and then Emily pointed out that there was another interpretation for your behavior, and asked me to give you the benefit of the doubt. So I am. I’m choosing to assume that your word still holds good, so mine does too. And I’m sorry I hurt you, and I’m going to give you the same level of medical care I’d give anyone else under my protection. Hey, Hancock.”

“Hey,” said Hancock, coming in. “What’s up?”

“Did Emily tell you what happened?” I asked. 

“Yeah,” he said. “I’d offer to kill it for you, but Emily’d never believe you wouldn’t be able to stop me if you tried hard enough, so it wouldn’t save you much hassle in the long run.”

“Yeah, don’t call him _it_ ,” I said, and he grimaced.

“Sorry,” he said. “Habit.” He looked at X9-21. “Sorry, X9-21. That was a shitty thing to say. I apologize. For calling you ‘it.’” 

X9-21 looked at him for a minute before he said, “I’m accustomed to being referred to in those terms.”

“Doesn’t make it right,” said Hancock. “What do you need from me, Nora? Want me to watch him awhile? Let you debrief with Emily?”

“No,” I said. “I need to talk to you. I feel like I’m losing my mind. I don’t want to break Emily’s heart, but--” I gestured towards X9-21, who was sitting perfectly still, watching me, just as Petunia came back in with a canteen, a stimpak, and a clean cloth.

“You’re the best,” I told her, taking them from her, and she rolled her eyes again and resumed her guard position. I poured some water from the canteen onto the cloth and leaned over X9-21; he held absolutely still as I put one hand on his shoulder and began cleaning the blood from his mouth and chin, gently, with the damp cloth in the other. Still, except that I thought I could feel, through the thick, padded uniform that covered his shoulder, a faint tremor. Was it me he was afraid of? Was it the prospect of death? Was it something else? Was I imagining it? Nothing showed on his face.

“This isn’t necessary,” he said, when I flicked the stimpak. “Your medical supplies must be limited. This is wasteful.”

“You let me worry about my medical supplies,” I said, and slid the stimpak needle, as carefully as I’d ever done for Emily, into his jaw. On impulse, I ran my fingers, gently, across his gaunt cheek before I stepped back and offered him the canteen. He reached out, eyes on my face, and took it.

“Drink,” I said. “If you want.”

He drank, eyes still on me. I didn’t know what to make of the unwavering intensity of his gaze. Was it the kind a lion got when it spotted a gazelle, or the kind a mouse got when it spotted a cat? Was eye-laser just his default setting?

I looked at Hancock, who’d been watching in silence as I tended to X9-21.

“You were saying,” he said, “that you feel like you’re losing your mind.”

“Am I?” I asked. “Is it crazy to think anything good could come from-- keeping him here? Am I just being crazy, imagining some kind of, of possibility, that-- or letting Emily talk me into thinking I imagine it? Unarmed or not, he’s a fucking badass, and he hates my guts, and he knows the reset code for my daughter. Am I being just colossally stupid? Am I going to get us all killed? Feel free to weigh in here, X9-21.”

“I gave you my word that I wouldn’t attempt to harm anyone here,” X9-21 said evenly, “or reset Y-- the synth. You either trust that word or you don’t. If you don’t, you should kill me immediately. To act otherwise would be foolish.”

“Is it foolish to trust your word?” I asked.

He met my eyes, and said, “No.”

“Yeah, but the thing is, we’ve only got your word for that,” said Hancock. “Listen, Nora, I’m not gonna lie. If it was up to me, this guy would be crop fertilizer right now. I see a threat, I take it down. You know this about me, ‘cause it’s the first thing you ever saw me do. If I’d have sat Finn down for some talk therapy about the childhood influences and deep-seated fears that shaped him into such a prick, maybe he would’ve seen the error of his ways and said sorry and we could’ve had a nice hug, but I didn’t. I saw a threat, and I took it down.”

“So you do think I’m being stupid.”

“I didn’t say that,” he said. “You’re not me. It’s not stupid of you to not be me. It’s not stupid of you to be a mom. I’m not a mom. I’m not even a dad. I don’t have the stones to be a dad in this fucked-up world. I love your kids, ‘cause they’re great kids, but I don’t love them like you do. I don’t love them to where my life won’t ever be the same again. There’s only one person I love like that.”

“It’s KL-E-0, isn’t it?” I asked, and he grinned at me, then sobered.

“I don’t love this guy, Nora,” he said, gesturing towards X9-21. “I look at him and I see an enemy. A risk. But you see the risk, and you also see-- like you said-- possibility. So maybe I just don’t see so good.”

“Or maybe I’m just seeing what I want to see,” I said.

“Maybe,” he said. “What do you want me to say, Nor? I can’t make this decision for you. If he turns on us, I’ll help take him down, but that’s about all I can do here. And I can tell you that whatever you do, it’s not because you’re stupid, or crazy. You’re neither, no. If that’s your question.”

“I guess that’s what I needed to hear,” I said. “OK.” I turned back to X9-21. “So yeah. I do trust your promise. And I’m sorry I got violent. Although, maybe it’s good that you saw how serious I am about protecting Emily. What did you think of what she had to say?”

He was silent, his eyes still steady on my face. 

“Look,” I said after waiting a while to see if he’d speak, “I’m not your owner. Or hers. She knows that. She didn’t really mean you should take orders from me.”

“She calls you Mother,” said X9-21, and I wondered if I was imagining the capital letter. As in, _Father is dead. Long live Mother._

“That’s how she thinks of me,” I said. “That’s how I think of myself. As her mother. As mother to all the synths, all the-- ones like you. I told you before, I think of you as family, I think of you as-- my children.”

“Is there another synth here?” he asked. “You spoke to her of her brother, and this--” He jerked his head towards Hancock. “Spoke of your children. More than one.”

“Did he just call me _this_?” said Hancock. “Not ‘this guy’ or ‘this freak boyfriend of yours,’ just ‘this.’”

“Well, you did call him _it_ , earlier,” I said. 

“I feel like _this_ is even more insulting, somehow,” he said. “Props for coming up with that one, X9-21.”

“ _Anyway_ ,” I said, deciding to ignore the question about other synths. I didn’t think he really expected to have it answered-- maybe he was just demonstrating to me that he was paying attention, picking up on clues. If he _was_ telling me that on purpose-- and it couldn’t have been an accident-- was that a good sign or a bad one? Was he demonstrating his vigilance in the face of enemy territory, or his trust in asking me openly what he wanted to know? If it was the latter-- but I couldn’t afford to get into this conversation. “My point was, Emily didn’t mean you should accept me as your new owner, just that-- you don’t _have_ an owner any more, right? You’ve made a choice to believe that what your last owner taught you was right, and that was a choice, just like--”

“You’re wearing a wedding ring,” he said.

“Um--” I looked down at my left hand. I didn’t think about it all the time or anything, but I did wear it. “I-- yes. I am. So?”

“Your husband is dead, isn’t he?” he said.

I blinked. “You-- yes, obviously you must know that-- he died when-- yes.”

“But you still wear the ring,” he said. “Just because he’s dead, it doesn’t mean your ties to him are gone. Your loyalty. What he was to you.”

“Oh,” I said, and swallowed. “Oh, you-- you mean-- oh, X9, I’m sorry. You mean Shaun. Father.”

“You defile his memory with your--” X9-21 began, and then broke off, and looked away. 

I wanted to reach out and touch him, take his hand, offer him comfort, but I didn’t know if I should, if I dared. He was dangerous, all the more so when he was in pain and potentially out of his own control. But he was _grieving_ \-- how stupid was I, of course he felt bereaved, by the death of the man he called Father, whose vision had given him purpose and meaning, who’d praised him and honored him and spoken to him of his worthiness. My son.

I stepped forward, and knelt down on the floor in front of his chair, not touching him, but looking up into his face. It was impassive, but his eyes were glassy. 

“Hancock, please leave,” I said without looking away from X9. “Actually-- all of you, please leave.”

“ _General,_ ” said Petunia, angry and protesting, and Hancock said, “Nora, do you really think--?”

I kept my eyes on X9-21’s face. 

“It’s fine,” I said. “Don’t worry. Just for right now. Go. Let us talk alone for a minute. Just trust me.”

There was silence, and then I heard movement, hesitating footsteps, as five people went, and left me alone with X9-21, looking up into his eyes. He said nothing.

“I’m his mother, X9,” I said. “I carried him inside me.” I touched my belly, flat and muscular again now, permanently unoccupied. “I nursed him. I walked the floor with him at night, when he woke up crying. I stood over his crib and rubbed his back and watched him sleep, and I dreamed about what he’d grow up to be. And after he was taken from me-- when I woke up-- my husband’s body was slumped in front of me, it was the first thing I saw, my husband dead and my baby gone, and then bodies everywhere, giant fucking roaches crawling all over everything-- I found a gun and I thought, it would be so easy, just to end this now-- but I couldn’t, because my baby was out there somewhere, and I had to find him. And I shot and stabbed and bludgeoned and trudged my way across this whole fucking irradiated hellscape-- and I tried to protect people when I could, too, and to rebuild, to-- make-- the kind of place I could live in with my baby, for when I found him. I did so much-- I worked so hard-- I turned into something else. Something I never was, before. I used to be-- soft. But I couldn’t-- stay that way. It was too important, to survive, to find him. I turned into what I am now, to stay alive, for him.”

“Until he made a choice you didn’t agree with,” said X9-21. “And then you turned on him, and betrayed him, and destroyed him.”

My heart was pounding-- adrenaline, panic-terror-rage, unbearable memories, unbearable vulnerability, the eyes of an enemy on me, unbearable accusations. Was he trying to goad me to kill him? I wanted to. Nobody said that shit to me. I didn’t kneel down on the floor and let myself remember my baby near people who would say that shit to me.

“I did everything I could,” I said, and it sounded like begging to my own ears, and tears stung my eyes. “I thought I had. I didn’t know what else to do. I’m sorry.” The tears spilled over. “I’m so sorry.”

He didn’t speak, and I shivered, blurry-eyed, for only a few moments before I pushed the tears away with the heels of my hands, momentarily blinding myself. This was no time, this was no place, to be doing this. I couldn’t let him look at my face when my own eyes were too tear-blurred to see his. This was fucking dangerous, was what this was. I’d sent away the guards, I’d knelt down before him, and I’d allowed my vision to become impaired, my muscles to go slack and trembly. He could have grabbed my gun just then, shoved it into _my_ mouth, taken me hostage, demanded Emily in exchange for my life, and if he’d killed me, Emily would have felt guilty forever. I couldn’t afford this kind of weakness, this kind of sentimentality. I couldn’t do this talking-to-him thing. I’d bring Emily in here again to talk at him, maybe, try the freed-synths-together tack, while I watched, ready to kill at a moment’s notice, like a good mother.

I stood up, and his gaze tracked me, up from the ground. The glassiness was gone from his eyes; maybe I’d just imagined it in the first place. 

I breathed deeply, a few times, deliberately smoothing out the hitches in my breath. 

“Give me that water,” I said, and he obeyed silently, handing me the canteen. I splashed my face, and dried it on my sleeve, then took a sip. 

“All right, guys,” I yelled, and my voice betrayed nothing. “You can come back in. I’m done.”


	4. In which I do Emily's hair

In the moonlight, Emily’s hair glimmered with individual strands of gold among the darker mass of it, under my hands. One of the reasons I was growing my hair out, and might even let it grow long enough to braid if I got the nerve, was because I took so much joy in Emily’s hair that it seemed unfair not to let her play with mine if that was what she wanted. She’d told me once, shivering in my arms, how the Robotics Division at the Institute had cut everyone’s hair regularly on the anniversary of their creation; how hers had been almost due for cutting when she’d escaped the Institute; how the raiders who kidnapped her had grabbed it in fistfuls and sawed at it with a knife blade while she cried and pleaded. 

I’d held her and stroked the pretty maple-leaf auburn of her ragged-edged hair, and told her about Glory, the sister she’d never known, who had bleached her hair white and shaved half of her cocoa-colored scalp smooth, once she was free of the Institute; how much I’d adored Glory, her courage and compassion and knife skills; how I’d just made up my mind to tell her how we were related-- and what that meant to me-- when she died, bravely, defending the Railroad. How I’d held her hand as she died, and promised, sworn by everything, that I’d finish her work, see every last synth free.

Emily had asked for more stories about Glory, and I’d told her about Malden Center, the time when we’d accidentally been assigned the same mission by the Railroad and had decided to run with it because we were each secretly dying to see the other in action. How Glory had sighed at the sight of the Gen One synths and half joked, “Can’t we just-- chase ‘em off?”

“She would have loved you so much, baby girl,” I told her. “You’re everything she ever hoped for, for her people. She understood why synths chose to have their memories erased, she didn’t blame them for making that choice-- but she never would have done it. She was proud of who she was. She never would have chosen to forget everything she’d lived through, and everything she’d chosen to become. She would be so proud of you, for being so brave and strong.”

“Do you fix your hair like that because that’s how she did hers?” Emily had asked, reaching up to touch the shaved side of my head with her cool fingers.

“Partly, I guess,” I said. “Her, and another woman, named Fahrenheit-- I guess at some point I figured every badass bitch I knew had hair like this, and who was I to be left behind? But you do whatever you want with your hair, sweetheart. I used to have mine long, when I first met Nate, and it’s not hard to keep it up out of your way, once you know how. I’ll show you.”

So she’d grown it out-- it had grown fast, like a child’s, and I was reminded that she was actually only five or six years old-- and now I was brushing it, under the moon and stars, with a fancy silver-backed hairbrush I’d found out and about, and boiled until I was sure it wouldn’t give her scalp leprosy or radioactive nits or anything else horrifying the world hadn’t yet thought to spring on me. When it was smooth, I began braiding, carefully sectioning off a ribbon of strands from the center of her forehead to begin with.

“Are you mad at me?” I asked her.

“No,” she said, holding her head still. “No, mother, of course-- you were just trying to protect me.”

“But you think I was wrong.”

“I had more to say,” she said carefully. “But maybe you’ll let me talk to him again, later.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Sure. Emily--”

“Yes, mother?”

I’d reached the nape of her neck, and reached for the ribbon that I-- impractically-- used to secure the end of the braid. “You knew him before? In the Institute?”

“Yes,” she said. 

“Was he--” I hesitated, tying the ribbon in a tight knot, and then a neat little bow. “Did he-- were you-- scared of him? Then?”

“Oh, of course,” she said, turning her head to look at me in surprise. “We were all scared of the coursers.”

“But you’re not scared of him now?”

“Why would I be?” she asked. “He can’t discipline me now. You won’t let him reset me. What is there to be afraid of?”

“But you still call him _sir_.”

“That’s not--” She smiled. “That’s just-- manners. Like he said.”

“You’re a funny girl,” I told her. “Emily-- sweetheart-- I need to ask you for a favor.”

“Of course,” she said gravely. “Anything.”

“It’s not easy,” I said. “What I need to ask of you. It’s a big, big favor. But it’s something I really need from you.”

She waited.

“If anything ever happens to me--”

“No,” she said, dismayed.

“Baby girl, please,” I said. “I’m tough and I’m careful, but still-- and plus, even if luck’s with me and I die of old age at three hundred, you’ll still be kicking--” _please God_ \-- “so you still need to hear this. After I’m gone-- I need you to be brave, baby. I know you are, I know you’re tough and strong and wonderful-- and I don’t mean to put it all on you. I’ve already had this conversation with Hancock-- because, you know, odds are he’s going to be around longer than me, and we don’t know-- well, you know, your brother, he’s still-- and he might always be-- just a kid. He might grow eventually, I don’t know, but he hasn’t seemed to, so far, and-- you know, I don’t know if you’re going to get old, the way humans do, either. Nobody in the Institute seemed to want to talk about things like that. I don’t guess _you_ know.”

“No,” she said. “I don’t know.”

“Well-- I know you’ll take care of him,” I said. “And Hancock will help. He’ll look after you both-- and he’s got plenty of friends who can help keep you safe, even if anything ever happens to _him_. And there are other people, too, all across the Commonwealth, who’ll help look after you-- one of these days soon I’ve got to take you to Diamond City, and introduce you to Nick Valentine, and Piper and Nat, and the Bobrov brothers, and Scarlett, and Travis-- and to Sanctuary Hills, to meet Preston Garvey, he’s the one who made me the general of the Minutemen-- and there’s always the Slog, they already love you and they’d be happy to take you back in-- my point is, Emily, you’re not going to be on your own. Even if anything did happen to me, you won’t ever be alone. But-- what I need from you, sweetheart-- I need you to promise me that you won’t let things fall apart. The Commonwealth. The Minutemen. Everything I’ve worked for. A world that’s-- safe, for good people, or at least-- livable. Where good people can see a future, and hope, and raise children, and be good. I want-- the future-- I want to know it’s-- in good hands. In _your_ hands. Can you promise me that? That you’ll-- carry on, for me? And for Shaun, and for the Minutemen, and the Commonwealth?”

She took my hands in hers and lifted them to her lips, kissing one and then the other, and then pressing them against her cheek.

“Yes,” she said. “Of course. Of course I will.”

“Good,” I said. “And if X9-21 kills me--”

“ _Mother!_ ”

“Sweetheart, it’s not outside the realm of possibility, is all,” I said. “Or that, if he tries taking me hostage-- and I’m the most likely hostage he’d take-- I’ll get killed in the shootout. The Minutemen won’t stand down just because I’m at risk, or at least I hope they won’t. They know better than that. So if it happens-- just _if_ , all right-- I don’t want you feeling guilty, or as if anything is your fault.”

“That _would_ be my fault,” said Emily, white-lipped. “I’m the reason he’s still alive, and if he killed you, I’d be the reason you were dead.”

“That’s not the same thing as it being your fault,” I said. “I’ve told you the story of how Hancock and I met, right? How he killed that jackass Finn who was trying to extort me? So you could say I’m the reason Finn’s dead, but it’s not my _fault_ Finn’s dead, right? I didn’t make that choice.”

“I can’t be the reason you die,” said Emily. “I can’t-- if you think-- mother, if you really think-- you should kill him now, you shouldn’t take that risk, not just because of me--”

“Emily.” I reached out to her, and she leaned into my arms, wrapping her own around me, burying her face against my shoulder. “No. It’s not just because of you. If I thought you were wrong, I wouldn’t-- but I don’t, I don’t think you’re wrong. I think he wants-- I think he _needs_ \-- what we can give him, what I hope we can give him. Love, and a family, and a vision for the future that isn’t about--”

After a moment, Emily lifted her head and looked into my eyes.

“Isn’t about--” she prompted gently.

“Father,” I said, and felt my mouth twist in an undignified prelude to tears. I was becoming hideously soft and maudlin; it was terrifying and unacceptable and I didn’t know what to do about it. “My-- my son. His--”

Emily rested one hand on my shoulder while, with the other, she reached up and touched my jaw. She hadn’t seen me touch the courser like this, cleaning off the blood; it was just a coincidence, just a comforting gesture, and it was silly of me to start shaking. 

“Did you know-- Father?” I asked suddenly. “I mean, did you ever-- meet him? Did he speak to you?”

“He spoke to us collectively, sometimes,” she said. “He would have us all summoned to the central atrium, to speak about policy changes going forward, or to encourage us if we’d been doing well, or admonish us if we hadn’t. Collectively, I mean. If an individual synth’s performance was faulty, he wouldn’t bother with that; a courser would handle it.”

I nodded. “But did he ever speak to you, individually? Personally?”

“Once,” she said. “He asked me if I knew where Dr. Li was. I did know, because I’d seen her in the medical bay, and I told him, and he went to find her. Why do you ask, mother?”

“When he spoke to you,” I said, “how did he get your attention? What did he say exactly?”

“Oh-- he said-- I think he said, ‘You there, unit,’” she said. “It scared me-- I thought maybe I’d done something wrong. Usually when one of the-- the scientists-- spoke to one of us-- well, sometimes it was because they needed us for an assignment, but if Father needed a synth for anything he wouldn’t have just walked out in the atrium and looked around for one, he’d have had one sent to him. But when he asked where Dr. Li was, I was glad I could tell him.”

“Did he say thank you?” I asked, and she smiled slightly.

“No, mother,” she said. “Nobody said thank you to us. Except Dr. Binet and Mr. Binet, sometimes, and when they did people would laugh at them. Dr. Loken asked Mr. Binet once if he’d made sure to thank the coffee machine that morning for making him coffee.” She touched my cheek again. “Why are you asking me all this?”

“I just-- I’ve been-- thinking,” I said, because _thinking_ seemed like a less alarming thing to say than _drowning in memories and uncertainty and regret_. “Seeing the courser-- someone who knew Father and, and loved him-- because I think X9-21 really did love him--” 

“You loved him too,” said Emily.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I thought I did. I told him I did. I wanted to. But I wonder now, did I really try hard enough, to talk to him, to understand him, to help him understand me?”

“I’m sure you tried,” she said.

“I thought I did,” I said again. “He just-- he brushed me off, as if I were being foolish-- or got angry with me, and shouted-- but was I patient enough, did I listen well enough, and explain well enough, before I-- did what I did? I don’t know-- I’d been fighting for so long, Emily, and-- brazening things out-- and he was used to being obeyed-- and I wasn’t expecting a grown man. I was expecting a baby, or a little boy, someone like Shaun, our Shaun. I didn’t know how to talk to him, and maybe I didn’t try hard enough, maybe I was too-- heartbroken, at the loss of my little boy. I couldn’t _see_ my child in this-- man.”

“The child is father of the man,” said Emily, unexpectedly, and I blinked at her.

“Where did you hear that?” I asked her.

“Dr. Holdren said it once,” she said. “I’m sure you did everything you could, mother. You made _me_ feel loved, almost right away, and you didn’t even know I was your child.”

“You’re easy to love, sweetheart,” I said. “When did Dr. Holdren say that? Was he talking about Father?”

“No,” said Emily. “He was talking to Dr. Karlin. It was about some new analytical model-- they were talking about whether they should discard what they’d been using before, and Dr. Holdren said, ‘No, don’t do that. The child is father of the man.’ I didn’t know what it meant, but I remembered it because-- maybe because I didn’t know what it meant, and it seemed interesting, and I wondered. Do you know what it means?”

“It’s a line from a poem,” I said. “An old, old poem. Old even when I was young.”

“Do you know the rest of it?” she asked.

“I-- I’m not sure,” I said. “I know how it starts. ‘My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky. So was it when my life began, so is it now I am a man’-- and then-- oh, ‘so let it be when I am old, or let me die. The child is father of the man.’ There’s more, but I don’t remember.”

“What does it mean?” Emily asked, a little furrow between her brows. “What is a rainbow in the sky?”

“You’ve never seen a rainbow?” I smiled at her. “That will be something to look forward to, your first rainbow. It happens sometimes when it’s raining and the sun is shining at the same time. The water in the sky refracts the sunlight, like a prism-- you’ve seen a prism? And you can see-- all the colors of the spectrum-- like a colorful ribbon in the sky.”

“My heart leaps up when I behold--” Emily repeated. “Will you say it again?”

I repeated what I could remember.

She frowned. “‘Or let me _die_ ’? Why?”

“I think it means--” I tried to remember old English-class discussions, Dr. Roderick’s class, the blackboard with WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 1770-1850 written on it in chalk. “I think what that part means is-- because we all change, as we grow up, and grow older-- but he’s saying, there are some things that don’t change, or they shouldn’t. Because they’re so important, he’s saying-- if I ever change that much, then I might as well be dead.”

“The child is father to the man,” Emily said again. “Because you change, when you grow from a child into a-- a man--”

“Or a woman,” I put in.

“Or a woman-- but you’re still the same, too. The way I’m like you because you’re my mother-- it’s the way you’re like you used to be. Not the same person, but still-- alike. Things in common. So you can tell the person you are is-- the child-- of the person you used to be.”

“You’re better at poetry analysis than I ever was,” I said. 

“But the other person is gone,” said Emily. “The person you were before. Once you’re someone new-- the other person, the parent, they’re already gone. So how can they tell you what the important things are?”

“I guess you just have to-- remember,” I said. “The way you’ll remember me, after I die, and the things I told you. The way I remember-- there are things I remember, ways I used to feel, when I was-- younger. Different.”

“That must be how he feels,” said Emily pensively. “X9-21.”

“That he needs to remember Father, you mean?” I thought she was probably right about that. “The things Father taught him?”

“That, too,” said Emily. “But I meant, the part about ‘or let me die.’ He must feel like-- if he lets go of everything he always thought was true, everything that was important to him his whole life, he might as well be dead.”

“Yeah,” I said, and took her hand in mine. “You’re pretty damn smart, you know that, baby girl?”

She smiled. 

“It’s not true about everything, though,” she said. “The synth I used to be would never have stood up to a courser. Or a human. There wasn’t anything that important to me, before-- worth being brave for. And being this different, it’s not like being dead. It’s the opposite.”

I lifted her hand to my lips and kissed the heel of the palm. 

“I’ve got to get some sleep, sweetheart,” I said. “You won’t go near him without me.”

“No, mother.”

“I’ll take you to talk to him again tomorrow, if you want.”

She nodded. “Thank you.”

“And remember what you promised.” I kissed her hand again. “I need you to stay safe, sweetheart. You could live without me. But if anything ever happened to you--”

“You lived without me until last summer,” she pointed out, smiling.

“Not sure how, though,” I said. “Good night, Emily.”

“Good night, mother. I’ll see you in the morning.”


	5. I will kneel down in your company (but baby don't you lie to me)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (chapter title from [the Fratellis' "Baby Don't You Lie To Me"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DprUg4PucMM))

I tossed and turned-- I hadn’t gotten a solid night’s sleep since the courser had arrived-- but made myself stay in bed, dozing fitfully, until six or so. Then I slipped out of bed, leaving Hancock still asleep-- why could he always, always sleep? Was it because, like he’d said, he wasn’t a mother?-- and went to check on X9-21.

As soon as I stepped into his alcove, I knew something was wrong. X9 was impassive, but the four guards’ faces all showed various mixtures of guilt, apprehension, and chagrin.

“You didn’t have to try to conceal the synth child from me,” said X9-21.

I felt my knees go weak and my fingers go numb, a roaring in my ears; I swung around on the guards. One of them opened his mouth to speak, but X9-21 wasn’t finished.

“I won’t try to reclaim it,” he was saying. “It was Father’s intention you should keep it.”

“How--?” I demanded of the guards collectively. “What--”

“He came in here,” said the one who’d started to speak before, Jonathan. “We shooed him back out right away, but the courser, uh, recognized him.”

“We were _aware_ of the project,” said X9-21, sounding faintly insulted at the idea that he wouldn’t have been. “Of course I recognized the Shaun unit.”

I turned and ran.

Matthew was at the radio microphone-- _It’s six a.m. All quiet, which is how we like it. Stay safe, people._ When he saw me, he pointed wordlessly up towards one of the broad outer walls of the Castle, where Emily often went to stargaze and chat with the settlers on night watch. 

I felt incapable of climbing the stairs at the moment; I leaned against the wall for a second, trying to catch my breath. Nothing had happened. Nothing bad had happened.

“General,” said Matthew, having switched the radio broadcast over to the violin track, “are you all right?”

 

When I did make it up to the top of the wall, Emily was sitting with her back against an unattended artillery piece, and Shaun was perched nearby, his arms wrapped around his knees. I half knelt, half collapsed down on the ground beside them; Shaun looked up at me, biting his lip.

“Shaun, what did I tell you about going near the courser?” I asked him.

“Not to,” Shaun mumbled. 

“But you did it anyway?”

“I just wanted to say hi,” said Shaun, shifting and looking at Emily, and then down at the ground. “He wouldn’t hurt me, mom. He knows me. Anyway, Laurie and Jonathan and everybody were there.”

“Sweetheart,” I said, “why didn’t you tell me? That you knew him from before, and you wanted to see him again?”

“You were so mad,” he said, looking back up at me. “And scared. I didn’t want you to be more mad and scared.” 

“Well, now I’m more mad and scared than I would have been if you would have just told me,” I said. “So next time, will you please tell me the truth, so we can make a plan, instead of going behind my back and scaring the living shit out of me?”

He nodded. “I’m sorry, mom.”

“Come give me a hug,” I said, holding out my arms, and he scrambled into them. I rubbed his back. _Had_ he grown? Sometimes I thought he had, but I couldn’t swear it wasn’t just my imagination. I could have measured him-- made marks on the wall, the way my mom and dad had done when I was little-- but it seemed cruel to put the idea in his head if what I worried was true, that he’d be ten years old and four foot whatever forever. 

I looked up over his head at Emily, who smiled sympathetically at me. 

“And if you can’t tell me something,” I told Shaun, “you could at least tell your sister. It’s always better to have somebody to talk about things with, before you do something dangerous. Because sometimes they can help you come up with a better plan. Like telling your mom and letting her take you to see the courser.”

“Will you?” he asked, pulling away abruptly, and startling me with his bright, hopeful face.

“Now?” I asked. “I thought-- you mean you want to see him again?”

“I didn’t hardly get a chance to see him,” he said. “Everybody made me leave. Laurie said you were going to court-martial them all if I didn’t get out. What does that mean?”

“A court-martial is a thing they used to have,” I said vaguely. “If you were in the army, and did something wrong. Baby, why do you need to see him again?”

“I dunno,” he said. “I haven’t seen anybody from the Institute in a long time. And not everybody there was nice, but the coursers would always say, ‘Hello, Shaun.’” He did a decent impression of a courser’s low-pitched, deliberately emotionless voice.

“You want to see him because you miss the coursers in the Institute?” I asked, looking up at Emily again. She shrugged helplessly.

“I dunno,” he said again, hunching his shoulders. 

“So now it’s both of you,” I said. “Of all the synths to ever come out of the Institute, I ended up with the two whose idea of a good time is a friendly chat with a courser. Well, come on. Not you, Emily, not yet. I can’t take both of you at once. My heart wouldn’t stand the strain. I can only be so ready to kill before my trigger finger develops a convulsive twitch and you both stop speaking to me.”

 

"Hello again, Shaun," said X9-21, and I almost thought I saw a smile on his face. 

"Hi, X9-21," said Shaun, suddenly shy; he looked from X9 to me, as if mutely asking me what he should say.

“Don’t look at me,” I said. “You’re the one who wanted to talk to him.”

“Do you know how to swim?” Shaun asked X9-21 after a moment.

“Yes,” said X9-21. 

“Me too,” said Shaun. “My mom taught me. Because I like to help with the crops, and I get really dirty, and then I go swimming and it’s more fun than washing under the pumps. One time a mirelurk hatchling snuck up and pinched me in the leg and it bled all over the place, but Emily stabbed it dead with her knife and picked me up and my mom stuck me with a stimpak and I was fine after that, but I have a scar, see?” He turned and lifted his leg to show the white scar on his tanned calf. I nearly had a heart attack as he moved his small body unselfconsciously within grabbing distance of X9, but then he straightened up and stepped back, still talking. 

“Nobody bad ever attacks us here,” he explained, “because we have so many defenses, but mirelurks and bugs are too stupid to know about defenses so they attack us sometimes. And you did.”

It definitely wasn’t my imagination now, although almost as soon as it happened, it was gone: X9-21 smiled. 

“Yes, I did,” he said. “I suppose it was stupid of me.”

“My mom says it was brave,” said Shaun, and X9-21’s gaze flickered to me, and then back to Shaun. “Even though you wanted to steal Emily.”

“Emily doesn’t belong here with you and your mother,” said X9-21, without looking at me. “She belongs to the Institute. Like me.”

“She does so belong here,” said Shaun, as I registered that the courser had used Emily’s name for the first time. “She’s my sister. And my mom didn’t take her from the Institute. She found her locked up in a closet with some raiders that hurt her and didn’t feed her enough. She was all skinny and scared and I named her Ruby because she wouldn’t tell us her designation because she didn’t want us to know she was a synth, but then my mom named her Emily because if I was a girl that’s what my name would have been. But if you wanted her you should have got her from the raiders before my mom did.”

“He’s got a point, X9,” I said. “Finders keepers. Where were you when she was getting sold from gang to gang and praying for death?”

“It’s regrettable that it took so long for us to--” X9 hesitated. “To attempt retrieval, of Y4-- of Emily. The Institute’s policy-- and once the Institute had been destroyed, there were those among my superiors who--”

“Hold up,” I said. “The Institute’s policy what? Why didn’t they go after her? She was there for months before I even showed up at the Institute, let alone destroyed it. I know you go after kidnapped runaways, because the first one of you I ever met was killing a bunch of gunners to get to K1-98. What was the hold-up with Emily?”

“That’s classified information,” said X9-21 stiffly, and I was about to roll my eyes-- _classified_? Really? Still?-- when I saw him dart a glance towards Shaun, and back at me. Unless I was imagining it, it seemed like he was asking me not to pursue the question in front of Shaun. I wasn’t sure why, but-- I wasn’t sure why not, either. 

“OK,” I said. “And once the Institute had been destroyed--”

“There were those among the remnant,” he said, “who felt that retrieval of an unskilled synth unit was-- an unwise use of our limited resources.” 

“ _Unskilled_?”

“Mom, it just means she wasn’t specially trained, like coursers are,” said Shaun.

“That’s correct, ma’am,” said the courser, and I think we both noticed at the same time that he’d called me _ma’am._ Neither of us commented. “It’s not intended as a slight on Unit-- on Emily. I’m sure she has many fine skills.”

“She does,” said Shaun eagerly. “She can swim too. And she can kill things with a gun and a knife. And she can cook, and she can fix things-- but not as good as me-- and she can tell really good stories about where our mom probably is and what she’s probably doing, when she’s not here.”

“That’s--” The courser coughed slightly. “Good, Shaun. It’s especially good, now that the Institute is gone and synths aren’t safe any more, for all units to be able to kill things if they need to. We’ll be very happy to have her, when she comes with us to help us rebuild the Institute.”

“Emily’s not coming with you,” said Shaun. “My mom won’t let her.”

“Your mother would stop her from doing her duty?”

“It’s not her duty,” said Shaun. “And she doesn’t want to come with you. She wants to stay here with us.”

“She might like it more than you think,” said the courser. “Some old friends of yours are with us.”

I glared at the courser, who wasn’t looking at me, as Shaun, agog, said, “Who? Who’s with you?”

“I can’t tell you, because your mother is listening,” said X9-21, “and if she knew, she would try to kill them all.”

Shaun was immediately outraged. “She would not!”

“I really wouldn’t,” I put in, holding onto my temper at X9’s attempted manipulation. “If you guys want to try to rebuild the Institute from scratch, it’s no skin off my ass, as long as you only involve people who actually do want to do that. If you start kidnapping people and murdering them, or experimenting on them and creating a new strain of super mutants, or enslaving them, that’s when we start to have a problem. On the other hand,” I added, struck by a sudden idea, “if you felt like bringing some or all of your people here, peacefully, this is actually a way better place for ex-Institute types than most places in the Commonwealth. Better than the ruins of Ticon, or the mirelurk-infested basement of University Point. I’d offer your guys the same things I offer any other settlers. Shelter, food, clean water, security, some decent workspaces. That’s for the scientists, if you’ve got scientists with you. For the coursers, all that plus job satisfaction. Taking back the Commonwealth from the human and ex-human scum. We could use more trained fighters in the Minutemen.”

“Under armed guard?” X9 asked sardonically, gesturing towards the people with guns around us. “That seems impractical.”

“We’d work something out,” I said. “I guess we’d all be nervous around each other for awhile-- and yeah, maybe I’d feel better at first if your people weren’t armed. Just until we all got to know each other.”

“Don’t insult my intelligence with such an obvious trap,” said X9-21. 

I shrugged. “If I’d wanted everybody from the Institute dead, I wouldn’t have given the evacuation order. And I would have gone around to Ticon and Wattz and all those other places you know I know about, and wiped you out, before now. Say what you want about me, but you know I’m not lazy. If somebody’s still alive, it’s not because I can’t be bothered to kill them unless they come to my house without weapons and kindly offer themselves to be murdered. It’s because I don’t want them dead. Think about it, X9. Shaun, did you have anything else you wanted to say?”

“If you bring them here,” said Shaun seriously, “I’ll teach them to swim.”

“There you go,” I said. “Can’t say fairer than that. Run help Deanna weed the carrots, Shaun. If your sister asks, tell her not to come in just yet. I’ll come find her later.”

“Bye, X9-21,” said Shaun. “Maybe I’ll talk to you again soon.”

“Goodbye, Shaun,” said X9-21. “I’m glad we spoke.”

When he was gone, I dragged another chair from the alcove to face X9 and sat down in it, resting my gun on my thigh. 

“Tell me why the Institute didn’t come for Y4-15,” I said. “Tell me the truth.”


	6. hold that fire when the day it comes (it always comes) you feel you'll never get it right

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ([Stars, "Lights Changing Colour"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nnm9I8Pk83I))

X9-21 looked-- I was sure of it, even though it wasn’t as obvious as most people’s facial expressions-- uncomfortable. He even shifted, a little, in his chair. I waited.

“Will you send your people out-- again?” he asked, finally, with a slight hesitation before _again_ , as if he wasn’t sure whether he should remind me I’d had them leave once before. I had myself pulled together now, though, and despite his general assholery and attempts to manipulate my sunny-hearted son’s emotions, I couldn’t help but feel a creeping warmth towards him. He really seemed to like Shaun. I guessed that made sense, now that I thought about it; his fanatical devotion to Father would translate into affection, maybe even tenderness, for the ten-year-old edition, even if the ten-year-old was a synth. And now that Father was gone, seeing Shaun must be even more poignant for X9-21, a reminder of the idiosyncratic pet project of Father’s last months. Reprogramming Shaun to recognize me as his mother must have been one of the last things Father ever did, and speaking of me to Shaun as _your mother_ must have meant something to X9-21. _Emily doesn’t belong here with you and your mother_ \-- tacit acknowledgement that Shaun did belong here, with me. Chattering away about crops and swimming and fixing things, and his mother, and his sister.

“All right, guys,” I said, turning around, and Laurie said, “General, I don’t think we feel comfortable--”

“It’s OK, Laurie,” I said. “Go on, go. Don’t go too far, but go.”

They went. God bless the Minutemen-- naturally contrary and anti-authoritarian, most of them, but they’d joined up because they cared about the same things I did, and I liked every single one of them at least a little, and most of them a lot, and they knew it, and liked me too. Not that all my Castle settlers were technically Minutemen, or vice versa, but when I looked around, here, I tended to think _God bless the Minutemen_ a lot. 

When they were gone, I raised my eyebrows at X9-21. “So?”

“Thank you,” he said. “And for-- dropping the subject-- in Shaun’s presence.”

“You’re welcome,” I said. “Also, you’re stalling.”

He gave me a quick, crooked smile, as startling on his marble deadpan as a lightning flash-- especially directed at me.

“I’m being courteous,” he said. “I can understand that you might not be familiar enough with such a thing to recognize it.”

It didn’t sting; it wasn’t even meant to. There was no hatred in his voice. He was _teasing_. The encounter with Shaun must have warmed him, too. It occurred to me, suddenly, that he wouldn’t have known until this morning whether I’d kept Shaun or not. How much of a relief would that first glimpse of Shaun have been, for him? Confirmation that Shaun was alive, safe, happy, suntanned and disobedient; confirmation of something about me, maybe, too.

The smile was gone from his face; his eyes weren’t focused on me any more.

“Well, you must suspect, or you wouldn’t be asking,” he said, and I remembered what my question had been. “That there were certain policies in place, concerning which synth reclamation efforts were regarded as high-priority, or as time-sensitive.”

“And Emily wasn’t,” I said. “You-- the Institute-- knew where she was, they knew what was happening to her, and they chose not to send anyone for her. Why?”

“You mentioned K1-98 as a parallel case,” he said, “but the gunners who’d taken K1-98 had no intention of-- keeping her. They kidnap for the sake of money, of ransoms. If a courser hadn’t pursued K1-98 within a relatively brief timeframe, her captors would have killed her, to minimize trouble and expense, and the Institute would have lost a valuable piece of technology. As it did in any case, due to your interference, but that’s a different issue.”

“So she did get away,” I said, and he nodded before continuing.

“Y4-15’s-- Emily’s-- situation was classified differently. The Institute was aware-- yes-- of what had happened to her, and where she was.” He did meet my eyes, then, his face empty of expression. “When a synth succeeded in escaping, and didn’t return for some time, there was often speculation, on the part of the remaining synths, that the runaway had escaped us altogether. So the effect on-- morale-- of the eventual return of some of these synths to the Institute-- scarred, starved, having experienced what life on the surface had to offer-- the effect was considered--”

I waited, sick at heart, for the word he’d choose. 

“Salutary,” he said finally, and I wanted to laugh, although it wasn’t even a little, tiny bit funny. _The effect on morale was considered salutary._ “And the psychological effects on the re-captured synths-- even after they’d been wiped, and retained no conscious memory of what had happened to them on the surface-- were considered salutary, as well. Any rebellious tendencies, any-- undesirable independence of thought or behavior--”

“Just-- stop,” I said. “Stop. That’s enough. I-- thank you for answering my question, but-- I get it. No more.” I wanted to press my hands against my eyes, against my mouth, against my ears to stop myself from hearing anything else he might say about the salutary fucking effects on morale of having your blank-eyed former friend and co-worker dumped back into your midst with hollow cheeks and staring ribs and unexplained scars and welts and bruises, but I couldn’t do any of those things; I had to keep my hand steady on my gun, my eyes on his face.

“You see why I didn’t want to speak of it in Shaun’s presence,” he said, and I nodded.

“I appreciate that,” I said, and I did. “But why did you want me to send the Minutemen out of the room?” Hand on my gun, finger on the trigger, in case the answer was _So I could do_ this--

“It’s obvious they’re emotionally attached to Emily,” he said. “Everyone in your-- community-- is. All of the ones you’ve appointed to guard me, at least. When she’s in the room, or even when she’s under discussion, their tension-- on her behalf, presumably-- is nearly as heightened as yours.”

“The operative word being _nearly_ ,” I pointed out. “So if anybody was going to shoot you for admitting what you just admitted--”

“My odds of surviving the confession seemed higher with one of you in the room than with five,” he said. “And you--” He hesitated. “You-- don’t seem to wish me harm. I don’t know that the same is true of your people.”

“I don’t wish you harm,” I agreed, and despite everything, despite the churning of my stomach, it was true. “You were a slave, just as much as Emily was. A higher-ranking slave, and you maybe bought a little more completely into their bullshit, but-- I mean, fuck, Emily bought it too. The whole bit-- synths aren’t people, they’re machines, tools, things. She figured she deserved all she got, for daring to run away in the first place. It’s been easier for her to-- change her worldview-- because in the Institute she was just a drone. An unskilled synth unit, right? And scheduled to be wiped anyway, and then abandoned by the Institute for all that time-- so she didn’t have much reason to fight me when I told her she wasn’t anything they’d ever told her she was. But you--” I smiled at him; I discovered I could. “You were-- honored. A valued, rare, elite unit. With a profession. A mission. A vision. It must be harder to let go of that. And you’ve been with them-- a long time, yeah? I’m late again. You had to figure out how to be, and I wasn’t there to help, not until-- late. Story of my life.”

X9-21 said nothing, for a long time, and I considered calling the guards back, on the grounds that the conversation was over, and didn’t. I just sat still, matching the rhythm of my breath to his.

Then he said, “I’m not going to persuade you to hand Emily over to me, am I?”

I shook my head. 

“And I’m certainly not going to persuade her that she’s better off with us,” he said. “So. I think it’s time for me to leave here. If you will allow me to leave.” He smiled at me, an artificial, rote smile, smile as gesture rather than expression. “It’s time to report my mission failure to my superiors, and take the consequences.”

“What will the consequences be?” I asked, more or less automatically. My chest was tightening, and my cheeks were flushing, and I really didn’t want to cry in front of him again. 

“Nothing too severe,” he said. “I’m too valuable a resource-- and facilities are too limited-- for that. And I would think they’ll be surprised and relieved to see me return at all, after this amount of time.”

“Well, good,” I said. “And hey, your mission wasn’t a total failure. You got some valuable information about our defenses, for when you guys come back in force later.”

“We won’t be back,” he said, without smiling at my dumb half-joke. “As I mentioned, it was considered somewhat foolish by most of the group to attempt to reclaim Y4-15 at all. I volunteered. I didn’t believe any group of humans could be sufficiently fortified to prevent me from reclaiming Institute property. I certainly didn’t expect to be taken prisoner. You’re to be congratulated on the caliber of your defenses. And of your Minutemen.”

“Thanks,” I said. 

“Will you allow me to leave?” he asked, and after a difficult moment, I nodded.

“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, I will. Just give me an hour or so to figure out the logistics. And to get Emily and Shaun out of the way. Do you want to say goodbye to Shaun, before you go?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Ms. Bowman,” he said harshly. 

“Fine,” I said, and raised my voice as I stood up. “Guys? Come on back in.”

They came back, eyeing X9-21 suspiciously, assessing the situation, looking at my flushed face and-- okay-- glassy eyes. I wasn’t actually crying, but yeah. 

“I’ve got to go-- make some arrangements,” I told them. “I’ll be back. X9-21--”

He looked up at me, waiting.

“I’ll be back,” I said again, and went out, quickly, very quickly, because I wasn’t actually crying, yet.

I held it off until I found Hancock, sitting on the grass by the workbench cleaning a gun, and sat down close to him, and put my head down on his shoulder. He put the gun down, wrapped his arms around me, and kissed me on the close-cropped side of my head.

“Hey,” he said against my scalp. “You want me to kill him for you now?”

I laughed, and that’s when the tears started, soaking into his coat. 

“Nah,” I said. “He’s leaving. I’m letting him go.”

“You think that’s smart?” Hancock asked.

I snorted. “Since when am I smart?”

He didn’t answer that. He just held me, and let me leak tears against him, and after a little while he said, “‘Member the first time you kissed me?”

“Sure,” I said, sniffing a little, irritated by how undignified it always felt to cry, like a little kid.

“‘Member I said I’d never wish the sight of this mug every morning on anybody I cared about, and you said it was your decision who you fell for, and you’d fallen for me?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I remember.”

“And I said to myself,” he said, taking my hand, “I said, ‘Hancock, my irradiated yet charismatic friend, we are not going to let this magnificent woman regret this absolutely enormous miscalculation she’s just made in our favor. We are going to figure out how to deserve this, and do it.’”

“Are you on grape Mentats?” I asked him, cheek still pressed to the tear-wet cloth of his duster.

“Sober as a judge,” he said. “Just, whenever you come and lean on me like this, or curl up against me at night, or kiss me on my fucked-up face, half of me thinks, thank God I’m doing all right by her, and the other half thinks, thank God she hasn’t figured it out yet, how bad I’m doing.” He kissed my hair again. “And whenever you cry, it makes me want to go kill something, or bring you something, or maybe kill something and bring you its head. Like cats do, you know?"

"I know," I said. "John-- it's not all right. You know. Never will be. But ever since we got together, it's all right that it's not all right. I can do it. I can go the rest of my life like this, easy, and I couldn't have said that before you came along. If that's doing all right enough for you."

"That's doing all right," he said. "Thanks, love. So we're letting the courser go back to his wild-eyed remnant?"

"Yeah," I said, pulling away and sitting up. "I've got to-- arrange things. Hey, actually, you can do me a favor, if you want. Will you take the courser’s gun they confiscated, and some ammo-- whatever it takes-- fusion cells, I guess-- and run it down to the diner? Leave it under the counter or in the fridge or something, so he can pick it up out there? I don’t want to hand it back to him, but I can’t send him out across the ‘Wealth unarmed. And I’ve got to talk to Shaun and Emily.”


	7. my mother said that day to me, this land is for the free

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ([Cilver, “I’m America”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cS-d42JUvis))

Shaun seemed saddened but unsurprised by the news that the courser was leaving, but Emily, as I’d feared, was distraught.

“You can’t let him go back to them,” she said. 

“Baby girl, I’m not going to stop him if that’s what he wants,” I said. “That’s not right. He can make his own decisions.”

“But they’re wrong decisions!”

“Well, that’s all right,” I said. “It doesn’t mean he doesn’t have the freedom to make them. He doesn’t belong to me. I mean, if _you_ decided to leave me and go with him, back to the ‘remnant,’ I wouldn’t stop you. I’d cry and beg you not to, and then I’d have a nervous breakdown, but I wouldn’t _stop_ you.”

“Did you cry and beg X9-21?”

“I cried,” I said shortly.

“Mother--”

“There’s no point in talking about it any more,” I said. “I mean, you can talk about it, but don’t ask me to do anything more than what I’ve already done. He’s leaving. I’m sorry-- I tried, I did, we both did-- but he’s made his decision now, and it’s not what we wanted, and that’s that.”

She walked away from me, then-- not something she was in the habit of doing. I left her alone for a little while, but then I had to go and ask her to take Shaun to the armory, which I’d figured was the safest place for them in case X9 decided to go out in a blaze of glory, destroying or resetting Emily or Shaun or both. Suicide by Minuteman. I didn’t think he would, but better safe than sorry.

“You won’t even let me talk to him again,” said Emily, still upset. 

“I will if you really want to,” I said. “But I don’t think it will do any good.”

She must have agreed, because she took Shaun’s hand and they went wordlessly to the armory. 

When they were safely out of sight, I went to X9-21.

“Let’s go,” I said, and he nodded, and stood. I hadn’t realized how tall he was.

I walked him to the big archway of the Castle, and stopped there, pointing to the abandoned diner.

“Your weapon’s in there,” I said. “And there’s a pack, with some spare ammo, and-- some stuff for the road. Or for your remnant, whatever.”

“That’s generous of you,” he said, and I shrugged, and he turned and went, without a backwards glance. I watched him from the doorway, walking steadily down the path to the diner, where he stopped and went inside, then came back out, eventually, with his gun and the pack, and kept walking, and walked until he was out of sight. Then I sighed and turned away, and went to my bed, and slept for ten hours straight. I guess I’d been a little on edge. 

When I woke up, Emily was sitting on the floor beside my bed. I swung my legs over and slid down to sit beside her on the cold stone floor. 

“You were moaning in your sleep,” she said. “What were you dreaming?”

“I don’t remember,” I said truthfully. “Have you forgiven me?”

“Oh, mother,” she said. “I wasn’t angry. Just sad. And scared. And frustrated.”

“Join the club,” I said. 

 

Hancock and I set out for Railroad HQ a couple of days later, to let Desdemona know what had happened. As I’d expected, she was furious with me.

“You let him _go_?” she demanded. “Bad enough you refused to pursue the leads PAM gave us, but a courser actually showed up on your doorstep, and you nursed him back to health and sent him away with his weapon and a supply of ammunition?”

“She packed up a bunch of food and purified water for him too,” Hancock put in, and I glared at him. “And medical supplies.”

“ _Agent Bullseye!_ ”

“You can call me Nora now, Des,” I said. “We’ve discussed this. Everybody knows who I am.”

“Agent Bullseye,” she repeated sternly, “you’ve put us at serious risk by your actions.”

“Oh, calm your tits, Desdemona,” I said. “The Institute is gone, remember? I infiltrated it and destroyed it, and I’ve gotten dozens of synths out of the Commonwealth, and I’ve killed about a million coursers already--”

“Six,” said Hancock. “Right?”

“I’ve killed six coursers already, and that was when they had synths teleporting in from the Institute to back them up. Now they’re running scared, holing up wherever they can, and the one who just tried to kidnap my kid waited until Hancock and I weren’t home, and got his ass kicked for him anyway. What the fuck are you so scared of? Why are you still living in the fucking catacombs instead of moving up to one of my settlements and getting some goddamn vitamin D in your system? What, you’re just agoraphobic and you justify it talking like the boogeyman is waiting to grab you if you go outside? I blew up Boogeyman Central, Desdemona. The sun is up, the sky is blue. You can live in a tomb for the rest of your life if you want to, but don’t bitch at me for not keeping you safe when that’s all I’ve ever done.”

Desdemona stared at me. I felt suddenly exhausted, not sure what had made me so angry a moment ago.

“Sorry,” I said. “Sorry, I--”

“No,” she said quietly. “I understand that this is an emotional issue for you. I shouldn’t have-- and you’re right, we’re so used to thinking of coursers as undefeatable enemies, but-- well. I won’t say I don’t wish you’d acted differently, but--” She reached out and patted me awkwardly on the shoulder. “I’m glad you’re with us, Agent. Before you leave, check in with Tom. He’s got some new things in stock you may be interested in. And be sure to give our love to Shaun-- and Emily.”

 

***five weeks later***

 

"Four for the beacon," called Petunia from her artillery piece, and I ran up the stairs to stand on the wall beside her and peer down the road. Sure enough, a small, ragged group of settlers-- two men and two women, from what I could make out-- was trudging up the road from the direction of the diner.

"I'm going to have to build more beds," I said. "Too bad the armory's so damp-- we're running out of room aboveground."

"I wonder how far they've come," said Petunia. "They look exhausted. Are they-- it doesn't look like they're even armed. Do you think they've lost a lot of people?"

They did look exhausted, and unarmed, and possibly wounded. One of the women was walking slowly and awkwardly, in a way that hardly anybody did nowadays, now that walking was the only way to get anywhere. As I watched, I realized that she wasn’t wounded, or awkward, or plump in the stomach and nowhere else. 

“General?” 

“One of them’s pregnant,” I said.

Petunia smiled. “Good thing they’re almost here. Home free, right?”

“You know it,” I said, squinting down at them-- a woman in her fifties, with grey-streaked, taffy-brown hair; the pregnant woman, thirties, black-haired and caramel-skinned; a scruffy-looking thirtyish man with his hand at the small of the pregnant woman’s back; and another man, tall and broad-shouldered, lifting his hand to shade his eyes from the sun and look up at me--

Without thinking, without warning Petunia, I jumped from the top of the wall, landing at the foot of the stony slope with a slight jar but no real injury, I didn’t think, and hurried towards them, not running, but going as quickly as I could without-- I hoped-- spooking them. They did look spooked, though, all but the taller man; the other three seemed to shrink behind him, and he stepped forward, his eyes meeting mine.

“Hello, ma’am,” he said. “I hope your offer still holds.”

He was wearing a grimy once-white T-shirt that showed off all the muscles his uniform had concealed, and tattered jeans. It was surreal.

“Ms. Bowman,” said the other man, who was thin and obviously frightened; so were the women. Even the pregnant one was thin; it made her belly show more than it might have otherwise. “We-- we hope--- that is, X9-21 led us to believe-- ”

“Of course,” I said dazedly. “Of course-- you’re all so welcome-- come with me, please, all of you, you must be exhausted, and-- thirsty, and hungry--” I looked at X9. “Is this-- all? Are more coming?” 

“Our group has suffered a bit of a schism, I’m afraid,” said X9-21. “Dr. Achanta--” he nodded towards the pregnant woman-- “is in need of better nutrition, more medical attention, and safer conditions than we’ve been able to secure, and when I made your offer to the group, she, Dr. Hastings, and Mr. Benson chose to accept it. The rest of the group chose-- not to.”

“Well, that’s too bad,” I said. “But I’m so glad you guys decided to come. Come on inside-- don’t mind the brahmin-- this is my Castle-- these are my Minutemen-- you’ll meet them all-- this is Mayor Hancock of Goodneighbor-- this is-- oh, Emily, look who it is!”

Emily hung back, shy; it was Shaun who came charging out from the mutfruit thicket and, before I could react, launched himself at X9-21, howling with delight. X9 caught him in midair and set him down, gently, on his feet. 

“Hello again, Shaun,” he said. “You remember Dr. Hastings. I don’t know if you were acquainted with Dr. Achanta or Mr. Benson.”

“Nope,” said Shaun, without much interest. “Hi, Dr. Hastings.”

“Hello-- Shaun,” the older woman said, flustered, as X9 said, in a slightly lowered tone, to me, “Our weapons are under the counter in the abandoned diner. Your people can retrieve them at your leisure. As I recall, you said you’d prefer we not be armed at first.”

“That was very thoughtful of you,” I said, beaming so widely and unashamedly at him that he cracked a tiny smile back, probably from sheer force of mirror neurons. 

“You worked in Advanced Systems, didn’t you?” I said to the older woman-- Dr. Hastings-- who looked ready to faint dead away at the fact of being directly addressed by me. “Listen, the first thing to do is get you all something to eat and drink, and then I’ll have the doc check Dr. Achanta out-- she should probably check you all out, actually-- and start to cure whatever ails you, and we’ll find you all a place to sleep-- except X9--” I beamed at X9 again. I couldn’t help it. “Come with me, we’ve got-- comfortable chairs-- would you like to wash up?”

“I believe Shaun promised to teach everyone I brought here to swim,” said X9-21, and Shaun laughed, and said, “Not now! Not when they’re all tired and hungry! You can’t go swimming when you’re _hungry_! Or for an hour after you eat a big meal, in case you get a cramp!”

“I did not know either of those things,” said X9-21. “Thank you for that information, Shaun.”

“You’re welcome!”

 

Hours later-- the three ex-Institute humans fed, examined, medicated, and put to bed, exhausted-- I stood in the courtyard, under the stars, by X9-21, who was examining the tato vine frames. Impulsively, I reached out and put my hand on his arm. He flinched and gasped, sucking his breath in between his teeth, and I drew away quickly as he turned to look at me.

“I apologize for that reaction, ma’am,” he said, impassive again. “I’m accustomed to having my arms covered with several layers of material at all times. The exposure of these clothes is still-- unfamiliar.”

“Where’s your uniform?” I asked.

“It was confiscated, ma’am,” he said. “I’ve been stripped of my status as a courser. At least by one faction of the remnant. I haven’t consulted Dr. Hastings-- I suppose she’s in authority now, as the senior member of this faction. Or-- I’m sure Dr. Hastings would defer to your authority. Would you like to reinstate me as a courser?”

“Do you want to be reinstated?” I asked. “Or-- uh, this is a little awkward to mention, but I actually have a few courser uniforms stashed away. Do you want one? Would you feel more comfortable? Or--?”

“It’s a kind thought,” he said, “but no. I think it’s wiser to become accustomed to a variety of styles of dress. You saw just now how my reflexes have been adversely affected, by failing to do so. Can I be of service, ma’am?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Why’d you come back? Or, why did you leave when you did, and then come back now?”

He was silent for a while, and then he said, “I wanted to stay. With you. I’d come to believe that you felt genuine remorse for the worse things you’d done, and that your betrayal of Father was-- well motivated, at least. And you were kind. It was good, being here. Even as a prisoner. I found myself imagining-- pledging my service to you-- earning your trust-- moving freely inside the Castle-- having you speak to me as you spoke to your friends. Or to Emily. 

“But I couldn’t believe that it was the right thing, to stay here. You had so much, and my masters, the scientists, they had only me, and the other coursers, to protect them and provide for them. They’re so helpless, here on the surface. They’re not used to needing to know how to survive. It’s not their fault. And I knew they’d never agree to your offer of assistance-- that they hated and feared you, just as I hated you, until-- until I came here, and saw--”

He broke off, then resumed, “I felt, I knew, it was my duty to go back to my masters. To be of use to them. I was punished for my failure, I was stripped of my status and of my uniform, but that wasn’t important, not weighed next to the ways I could still be useful.

“But then-- it became clear that Dr. Achanta was unwell. None of them were well-- how could they be?-- but she was suffering from anemia, and other vitamin and mineral deficiencies, and swelling that prefigured possible eclampsia, and radiation sickness, of course-- and we had so few medical supplies. We quickly used the ones you gave me when I left here, and then we had nothing again, and no reliable source of food or clean water, and-- I knew what I had to do. To be of use. I had to bring them here. I had to believe-- it was my _duty_ to believe-- that you meant what you said, when you offered.”

“Thank you,” I said. “For bringing them here. For believing me.”

“Thank you for offering,” he said. “And for meaning it.”

I held out my arms. “Will you give me a hug?”

He hesitated, and grimaced, and then stepped forward and stood stiffly within the circle of my arms, his arms bent sharply at the elbow so that his thumbs pressed pointily against my shoulders.

“You need practice,” I said, stepping back. “Or maybe you’re just not a hugging kind of guy.”

“I’ve never had occasion to find out, before,” he said. “But thank you for that opportunity, as well.”

“I can’t tell the difference between your sincere voice and your sarcastic voice,” I said. “Or maybe there is no difference. Do you want to call me mother, like Emily does?”

“I-- do not,” he said. “If you’re amenable, I would prefer to continue to address you as ma’am.”

“Whatever floats your boat, X9-21,” I said cheerfully. “Do you want me to keep calling you X9-21?”

“That would be my preference, yes,” he said. “I understand the appeal of a more humanlike name, but-- there’s a great deal of honor and accomplishment associated with my designation. I can’t imagine a name that would mean _me_ in the way that X9-21 does. Not yet. Maybe one day.”

“Maybe so,” I said. “I’m going to go to sleep, OK? Please don’t kill anybody, or reset either of my kids, or take over Radio Freedom in the name of the New Institute World Order. OK?”

“Behavioral parameters acknowledged,” he said. “Sleep well, ma’am. And thank you again. For everything.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end! Thanks so much for reading! Thanks especially to anyone who's commented or kudosed-- means SO MUCH-- and especially ESPECIALLY to leomona for inspiration and encouragement!


	8. Surprise Optional Bonus Chapter: In which X9-21 speaks in the first person

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BattyRae suggested a few "bits and pieces" from X9-21's perspective, so here they are. Thanks so much for the suggestion-- I hope you enjoy!

i. 

This is not what I expected.

I expected one of two things: either that I would overpower the defenses of the humans, recover and reset Y4-15, and return to my owners, or that I would be destroyed in the attempt.

I had no contingency plan for the event of being taken prisoner. That was extremely careless of me. I dismissed the possibility because I didn’t consider that it might benefit them to take me prisoner. I still don’t understand that. How they think it will benefit them.

I’m not concerned-- I had already taken the possibility of my personal destruction into account, and I’m unable to mentally postulate a fate worse than that destruction. If these humans intend to torture me, they will learn how little pain means to me any more, after my training. 

I’m not concerned, but I am--

I dislike the feeling that I have not fully accounted for every eventuality.

I should plan what to say when they allow me to speak again, if they allow me to speak again before killing me.

I wish I knew why they haven’t.

 

ii. 

She is not what I expected, either.

I can see the resemblance between her face and Father’s. In retrospect, I should have expected that. She is younger, less infirm, but the eyes are the same. 

I don’t understand what her intentions are towards me. This is dangerous. I can’t formulate a strategy, make contingency plans, if I don’t understand the parameters of the situation. 

 

iii. 

I’ve reclaimed many runaway synths in my time. Of those who retain their memories of the Institute, they have two reactions to the sight of me, mixed in varying proportions: fear, and aggression.

Unit Y4-15 displays neither. She is respectful, and yet unafraid. 

She smiles at me. I’m fairly sure I’ve never been smiled at by a synth before. Except the Shaun unit, and that was a unique situation.

(I suppose the Shaun unit was destroyed with the Institute, and Father.)

Y4-15 addresses the woman, the destroyer, the traitor, as _Mother_ , and is addressed in turn as _sweetheart_. 

It becomes clear that she’s transferred her loyalty-- what loyalty a renegade synth like her is capable of-- to this woman, and she thinks I should do the same. To the woman Father trusted, who destroyed him, and his work, and our home.

It’s disgusting. It’s sickening.

She seems so happy.

 

iv. 

I’ve been spared by the pleading of a synth.

I don’t understand Y4-15’s game, unless she means to insult me. She must know coursers don’t speak carelessly; that my use of her designation was intentional. I meant both to remind her of her place in the world, and to test her owner’s readiness to defend her.

I seem to have failed in the first respect, and succeeded in the second.

The traitor has proved reluctant to kill me, but she was ready to kill me to protect this synth. The pain in my mouth is comforting, in a way: a valuable reminder of the boundaries of my situation.

And then she sends one of her people for a stimpak.

I’m familiar with their use, of course-- I’ve even used the ones I’ve been given, when I’ve been severely injured enough to warrant it-- but the idea that she would use it for such a minor injury, one that doesn’t impede my functionality, even if I were in any position to perform my proper functions-- is--

\--incomprehensible.

I can’t _stop_ her, not without violence. I can’t beg her not to heal me.

The pain vanishes. 

 

v. 

The sight of the Shaun unit causes a strong and complex emotional reaction in me that I can’t immediately identify and analyze.

I’m pleased to see it again. Pleased that Father’s wishes are being carried out, in this respect if in no other. He intended to give this unit to his mother.

I’m surprised she kept it.

I’m curious to see whether, and how, she’ll punish those she’s set to guard me, for their failure to keep it from approaching me.

I’m surprised that, rather than reprimanding them, she disappears for a while, and then brings it back in to speak to me.

It seems pleased to see me, and she clearly indulges it. I have to tread carefully, consider how I can leverage its reaction to me, and hers to it, to my advantage.

It has those same eyes. His, and hers. 

It seems happy, too.

 

vi. 

It isn’t only Y4-15 and Shaun-- her “children”-- who seem happy and unafraid here. All of her people whom I’ve seen appear well nourished, healthy, cheerful, and unconstrained in their demeanor and speech, whether in her presence or out of it. They seem to respect her, and to obey her direct orders, but not to fear her. I’ve never heard her speak harshly to one of them, even when she was frightened or agitated. I’ve never heard her order anyone punished. 

She hasn’t had me punished, either, for my attempts to test and provoke her, my deliberate insults and insolence. I’ve been fed at regular intervals (far more frequent intervals than I’m accustomed to, and more plentiful portions), and I sit unbound and unrestrained, fully clothed, in a comfortable chair. When she did inflict a minor injury, she used valuable healing supplies to repair it almost before I had time to notice it.

I admit, if only to myself, that I can imagine a fulfilling life here, with her, in her service. Y4-15 is nothing but an indoor synth, a weak thing without surface functionality or specialized training; I have allowed myself to imagine how well I could serve the woman who calls herself our mother, how valuable I might make myself to her. How joyfully, and with what a proud and tender smile, she might praise me.

But my function is not to be protected, or indulged, or praised, or loved. It is to protect, and to serve.

My Institute masters understand my nature, as she does not. 

I am no one’s child. It’s past time to return to those who know, and can remind me, what I am.

 

vii. 

It is-- of course-- my owners’ right to discipline me for my failure, to strip me of the honor Father himself bestowed on me. 

I thought I handled the situation as well as I could reasonably have been expected to do, but my owners have determined that I should have done better. It’s my responsibility to learn from their correction and improve my behavior accordingly.

There is nothing unduly harsh or cruel about the way they speak to me. I simply have to re-acclimate myself to it, after the strange treatment I received in her stronghold.

Father would expect me to remain loyal, to serve the remnant of his Institute, his people. And I will.

 

viii. 

I’ve seen Mr. Benson crying.

I and the others have been doing our best, but the radiation present in all the food we can bring home is making the humans sick, and the anti-radiation drugs are so scarce. What food we can manage to prepare skilfully enough to rid it of radiation all goes to Dr. Achanta, and it still isn’t enough.

How was everyone at the fortress so healthy? None of them ever appeared to be sick or hungry. There were more anti-radiation drugs and other healing supplies in the pack she left for me outside the walls than the others and I have been able to scavenge or purchase in a year, and even those were used up so quickly.

I believe Dr. Achanta’s life is in more or less immediate danger, and that in the longer term, all their lives are.

I have to consider my course of action carefully. If I lead the remnant into danger-- if the offer she extended was a trap, and I deliver my owners into the hands of someone who does not wish them well--

\--that would be unthinkable. No courser-- no one Father ever honored and trusted enough to make a courser-- could survive the horror of such a thing. Even if I died defending them, it wouldn't expiate my guilt.

But if there is a place of safety and plenty, somewhere they could all be properly nourished, where they could receive effective treatment for their illness and be preserved from further cellular damage, where Dr. Achanta’s life could be saved-- and if the leader there would feed and heal and shelter them for _my_ sake, for the sake of whatever it is that she feels for me-- 

(She had tears in her eyes when she told me she would allow me to leave.)

\--I have to at least let them know. The possibility. After that, they can decide whether to take the risk or not.

I’ll approach Dr. Hastings, I think. She argued against my punishment. She said I’d done well, to survive the encounter and return intact, with supplies. If I ask permission to speak to her, she won't refuse me.

 

ix. 

I’ve never made anyone so happy. Father was sometimes pleased with me, proud of me, but she’s beaming all over her face, barely able to contain herself with joy. Because of me.

Dr. Achanta will live now, and so will her child. Mr. Benson won’t have to grieve, the way humans do over the deaths of their mates and children. (The way _she_ does, over her child. The way she let me see her grieve, for a few moments, tears spilling down her face as she told me she was sorry.) Dr. Hastings won’t regret her decision to hear me out, to speak for me to the others, and to join us.

I’ve never owned anything-- it would be categorically impossible, since I am, myself, property-- but I had this to offer. What she offered me. This was within my gift, and I gave it.

I’m no longer sure to whom I belong. Not to the part of the remnant I’ve left behind. To the three who accompanied me-- who live here, now, on her sufferance and under her authority? Or to her? If Dr. Achanta or Dr. Hastings gives me an order that countermands one of hers, which is it my duty to obey?

I know what she would say-- that I belong to no one, that I can make my own decisions. In practical terms, it’s true that I _must_ now decide for myself whom to obey. But I owe Father’s people my service, to the best of my ability, in memory of the ways in which he shaped me; and I owe her something, too.

I’ll consider this. It’s not necessary to make a decision at this moment. At this moment I’ve managed to please them all-- my Institute owners are peacefully asleep, and she’s initiating a hug. 

I don’t think I perform particularly well at being hugged, but the sensation of her arms encircling me, embracing me, is-- not unpleasant.

I have been well trained to withstand considerable hardship, suffering, privation, and danger. I have never been trained, or tested, under conditions of safety, plenty, indulgence, and affection. But as the loss of my uniform has taught me, it’s best to know how to function in a variety of circumstances.

I don’t know what Father would think of this, exactly, but I think I’ve done well.


End file.
